


Brad Colbert Goes to Comic-Con

by waketosleep



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Comics, Conventions, Cosplayers, Gen, San Diego Comic-Con, Science Fiction Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 13:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like most things, it's Ray's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brad Colbert Goes to Comic-Con

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/gifts).



> After Lazulisong went to Kumoricon in Portland earlier this month, her traumatic experiences judging the fanfic competition led to me filling for her the prompt: "Brad Colbert goes to a convention". I wrote most of it at her in an IM window, forgot about it for like three weeks, and then finished it in an afternoon. /o\ There's really no excuse for this story besides that it made her happy. In fact, that's a warning: _it made Lazulisong happy_.

Ray's text caught Brad right after he got out of the shower, sand still swirling down the drain.

_What are you doing this weekend_

Brad sighed.

 _Surfing_ , he texted back. He was surfing every fucking day of libo they got, if he had his way. He had a feeling this was going to be one weekend he wasn't going to get his way.

_Wrong answer bitch. Clear your schedule and spend some time with your best pal Ray._

Brad texted back a demand to know what the hell he was being shanghaied into but got no response. It was probably too late to just change his phone number. Maybe he could do it for next time, but he was probably naive to think that would stop Ray.

***

"Are you ready for a motherfucking par-tay?" Ray announced when he showed up on Saturday morning.

"No." Brad leaned in the doorway, blocking the view inside his house. Ray was wearing his usual retarded getup of oversized jeans, skate shoes and a Flash t-shirt.

"Fucking typical. Where would you be without me, homes? Come on, are you ready to go?"

"Where the fuck are we going?" Brad relented and stepped out of the doorway.

"Comic-Con!" Ray brandished some passes. "My buddy who was supposed to go with me bailed. Don't worry, I'll just cover your ticket."

Brad stopped dead in the hallway. "You think I'm going to go to fucking Comic-Con."

"I made you clear your busy social calendar for it, so yes, you are. It's gonna be awesome."

"I fucking grew up in San Diego, Ray, I'm not going to that thing and especially not with you."

"You've got ten minutes and then we gotta leave, there's a Batman panel at one o'clock I wanna get into."

Brad turned around and stared at Ray. Ray stood his ground and stared back.

***

The three guys dressed as Superman, Brad could handle. The chick dressed as Lara Croft was pretty tolerable. The dude in the sailor schoolgirl uniform and yellow wig and tiara was across the fucking line.

"Where the hell have you fucking taken me, Person?"

"Breathe it in, dude," said Ray happily. "Soak in the atmosphere."

"It smells like fifty peoples' deodorant screamed their tragic deaths half an hour ago."

"It's early yet," Ray dismissed, and was that supposed to be reassuring? "Come on, you like nerd shit. You recognize these costumes. These are your people, Brad."

"That inbred crossdresser with the fairy sparkle tiara and the hairy legs is not my people," said Brad, pointing at him. He wanted to look away but he couldn't.

"That's Man Sailor Moon," said Ray, smirking over at him. "He's here every year."

"How long is this line for your panel going to take, anyway?" Brad glanced around them. There were too many people. He hadn't been back in the US long enough for this many people.

"This is the line for registration," said Ray in a 'duh' tone. "The panel line comes after this."

Brad turned on his heel. "I'm leaving."

But Ray caught him by the shirt sleeve. "No wait stop stay _god damn it, Brad._ Do not bitch out on me. I have been waiting for this since last summer when I missed Comic-Con because I was still fucking deployed."

Brad stopped trying to escape.

"There's programs at the desk at the front of the line," said Ray, sounding just this side of pathetically grateful that Brad wasn't running. "There's gotta be something here that meets your exacting standards in entertainment."

Brad doubted it, but he'd spent longer putting up with shittier things for worse reasons. And generally with more sand in his orifices.

***

The Batman panel was vaguely interesting. It was mostly about the comics, which Brad had read a few of. Batman was a pussy and his no-kill policy was fucking retarded in practice--if killing the Joker was outside your ROE then your ROE needed to change, in Brad's view--but Ray was really interested and some of the questions were fucking hilarious.

At the end of the panel, Ray looked at his program. "This room's got a panel about Adult Swim now."

Brad stood up. "Time to go."

"Now what?" Ray asked. "There's another one I want to go to later but did you see anything you wanna check out?"

"I need to map the area," said Brad, leading the way out of the room with his hands in his pockets. They wove through the crowds. There was a dealer's hall full of overpriced comics and video games and replica swords from Lord of the Rings, and another room full of amateur artists who were drawing pictures of Sonic the Hedgehog in compromising positions, Wonder Woman with more cleavage than Brad had ever seen her, and a whole corner of art centering around that anime shit. There were more panel rooms and in all the in-between areas, people. Dudes with neckbeards and nerdy t-shirts, entire families with little kids, random young couples and half of all of them in costume.

"Holy shit," said Ray, "tiny Sith Lord on your three."

Brad looked; the six-year-old Sith was being led around by a mom dressed like Leia from Empire. "Jesus christ," he said.

"It's so cute I might puke," said Ray.

"Shame he went darkside so young," said Brad, startling a laugh out of Ray.

"Now you're getting into it, homes." Ray slapped him on the back. "Let your nerd flag fly."

Eventually they stumbled across a panel that was just starting; people were being waved into the room. "Stargate," Ray read off the sign outside the room. "Damn, that movie with Kurt Russell and the Egyptian aliens? I heard they made that into a show."

"All right," said Brad, "let's do this." He grabbed Ray by the elbow and hauled him into the room, grabbing empty seats at the end of a row about halfway back. The head of the room was another long table with people seated behind it; one of them was MacGyver.

And recognizing MacGyver at the front of the room was the last happy moment of the panel for Brad, because apparently the characters in the Stargate TV show were military. Mostly Air Force, but they showed an episode and it depicted Marines, too. It depicted people _described_ as Marines, anyway. Brad was ashamed that MacGyver wasn't ashamed to be part of a production like that.

"What the fuck," said Brad under his breath at the end of the clip.

"There's no fucking justice or mercy in this world," Ray hissed, looking just as offended.

It was right then that a Q&A started. "Come to the microphone and state your question loudly and clearly," said the moderator, and a scraggly line of fanboys and girls formed behind the microphone in the centre aisle. Brad hopped to his feet.

"Don't get us kicked out of Comic-Con," Ray pleaded as Brad walked past, but he didn't try to stop what was about to happen. Ray knew better.

It took ten minutes of patiently waiting through three other questions about set pieces and the stupid-ass 'character relationships', during which Brad did the meditative breathing Rudy had taught him once, and then it was his turn. He leaned down toward the microphone, looking up at the panel of pussy actors as he spoke, carefully and clearly.

"Which slack-jawed, left-wing, inbred retard on your writing and production staff is to blame for your television program's deplorable and asinine misrepresentation of the United States Marine Corps?"

There was a profound silence.

"I'm sorry," said Brad, "should I repeat the question?"

A man with a neckbeard half-rose from his seat. "I'm, uh, I'm one of the head writers on the show."

"Oh, so it's your fault?"

"I--"

"Do you hate the military, sir?"

"Well, no, I--"

"I only ask because a real Marine in that episode would have identified and shot the alien threat in the first two minutes, thereby rendering null the entire plot of that forty-minute farce. I humbly suggest on behalf of the Corps that if you're that strapped for fictional conflicts you're good enough to write about, you should take the Marines right out of the show. It's incredibly unrealistic."

"Our viewing audience seems to like--"

Brad held up a hand until the poor Hollywood retard finished choking on his indignation and was silent again. "I'm not in your viewing audience," he said. "I mean, I thought the movie was okay, but I can see from this," he waved at the blank projector screen, "that your goddamn show is just one more example in a long line of science fiction that besmirches the proud heritage of the Marine Corps by turning them wholesale into retarded five-year-olds with heavy weapons instead of the highly-trained machines of warfare they are. The kids today who watch your terrible show will be the Marines of tomorrow, and we'll be lucky if we get anything _but_ retarded five-year-olds with that kind of passive recruitment. Also, your alien costumes suck and you shot that whole thing in the same ten square feet of Vancouver. You should all be ashamed, especially MacGyver."

MacGyver smirked and then looked like he regretted it. That was approximately the point when the moderator crept up to Brad and asked him to leave, carefully, as if Brad was going to give him trouble about it.

Brad, for his part, resisted the urge to feint a lunge and see if the moderator pissed himself; instead he shrugged amiably and nodded at Ray before sauntering out of the panel room. Ray caught up with him in the concourse.

"So you came really fucking close to getting our asses banned from Comic-Con, motherfucker, which is _not okay_."

Brad looked down at Ray.

"But on the other hand, that shit was hilarious," Ray admitted.

"Let's get some food," said Brad, checking out the fifth Slave Leia he'd seen since they arrived. "What was the panel you wanted to go to later?"

"It was about the new Battlestar Galactica," said Ray, and then he paused. "Maybe you should stay out of the room for that one."

"Nah," said Brad, "I can believe anything about the Air Force." He stopped dead in the hall. "How is that woman's costume even staying on?"

"Who?" Ray asked, looking around wildly.

Brad pointed at a woman dressed as a Mortal Kombat character; her costume was a pink satin thong swimsuit, essentially, held together across the front by laces and fond hopes. He couldn't decide if he was turned on, horrified or fascinated. He was feeling all three at once, somehow.

The woman looked over at them and winked before walking away, camera flashbulbs trailing in her wake.

"Remind me to change my number before the next time you ask me to one of these things, Person," said Brad, shaking his head to clear the image.

"I knew Comic-Con would be an epic gong show for the ages with you here," said Ray. "Come on, asshole, I saw a sign for churros."

 

THE END


End file.
